As many as 200 al Qaeda fighters, including top commanders, have escaped from Afghanistan to Lebanon and are fighting for control of a Palestinian refugee camp, intelligence sources said yesterday.

Syria, which controls much of neighboring Lebanon, allowed the al Qaeda members to reach the Ein el-Hilweh camp, where they have clashed with Lebanese soldiers, according to an account first reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

At least nine soldiers and three al Qaeda members were reported killed last month in gun battles at the camp of 75,000 refugees near the Lebanese coastal town of Sidon.

“What happened in Ein el-Hilweh is a real war . . . [and] could become a turning point on the way to the establishment of a state within a state,” the Lebanese newspaper an-Nahar warned last month.

When the fighting began, officials in the camp said the clashes were between members of a radical Palestinian faction and Lebanese militants who were hiding from Lebanese security officials. But Haaretz said the fighting was due to the arrival of al Qaeda fighters – Palestinians, Jordanians and former Jordanian residents of Palestinian descent – who had come to Lebanon from Afghanistan by way of Damascus and Iran, with the permission of Syria.

The al Qaeda are estimated by intelligence sources to number 150 to 200 and include senior officers, Haaretz said.

A Lebanese intelligence source claimed the estimate was exaggerated, and only 10 to 15 al Qaeda are in the camp.

Syria’s connection to al Qaeda and Sept. 11 is murky, but Haaretz noted:

* Mohamed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, visited Syria two or three times, but Syrian intelligence agencies did not offer that information to the United States.

* Osama bin Laden’s son, Omar, and his mother, Nagwa, were living in Syria until three weeks before the attacks, leaving when they received instructions to flee.

Omar returned to Syria at least three times after Sept. 11. But neither he nor his mother are believed to be there now.